A preliminary study of sustainable transport indicators in Malaysia: the case study of Klang Valley public transportation

This research centres around the exploration of applicability and transferability of some international/global sustainable transport indicators in an important city region in Malaysia, namely Klang Valley. The review of literature highlighted several important measures to identify, determine and select the relevant sustainable transportation indicators. From the thousands of indicators, some 30 over were chosen to be tested in the different scenarios of public transportation delivery in Malaysia, which possesses different tropical climate and values/beliefs from other developed countries in the world. The research applied the snowball internet survey method, in addition, to face-to-face semi-structured interview questionnaire. Samples were selected from a list of various professionals relevant to the field of transportation. They included transport planners, traffic engineers, public transport operators and managers, transportation economists, environmentalists, academician and researchers as well as urban and regional planners. It was found that a number of indicators such as percentage of bus passengers and number of minutes between buses on scheduled routes are suitable and relevant to the setting of public transport sustainability in Klang Valley. However, several other indicators were deemed unsuitable and irrelevant to represent the measurement of sustainability of transportation in the country, generally, and Klang Valley, specifically. Hence, it is suggested by the research that future selection of indicators to be of greater sensitivity and more realistic with the current/existing situations, circumstances and fortune of the country/city/region, with regards to the variation of combination and split of modality of passengers of public transportation. Preliminary findings of the research are intended to be disseminated through another set of focus group discussion among identified stakeholders and decision makers